A fine artistic benefit of the city closing a golf course has been the return to a lovely savanna like park of rolling land and scattered trees. The grasses grow tall and sway gold in the late fall ... and then they mow it! It's unattractive for a while but I like that they are selling the virtually pesticide free hay.
Here are a couple of the tiny paintings from there, and it'd be lovely to do more soon, before it does get sold for condo development (can you say, there's a housing glut?)
Working title is 'tiny skinny I'
'Tiny skinny II' below:
• Juniper and pine, arborvitae and other evergreens with the orange and green problems
• Opportunity to look deeply at light as it falls between trees at differing depths from the painter, this is excellent to see how much a few degrees can matter in whether something is contra lit or flat front lit, sometimes both in the same tree
• A small pond that can be used for relief from the pattern of similar size forms against the grass
• The chance to paint dead weeds! So fun for pastel handling and mark making, great rusty colors of dock and dried umbels of Queen Ann's Lace
• Shadows in tall grass and trees that shade one another
• ...and at this time of year its a chance to get away from the "wall of green" that is happening most other places in the mid west.
Working titles will change after I have a few more in the group.
